The Joy of Christmas

by Amy Newmark

  I was a seasoned traveler and had journeyed to many countries alone. However, I wanted to share this experience with someone, not because I thought I would stick out like a sore thumb, but because the Christmas season is a time to be with friends. My husband couldn’t come, as we have a menagerie of animals and nobody in their right mind would want to look after our wonderful, but mostly hyperactive, brood. I mentioned the trip to my friend Clare, expecting a barrage of excuses, but surprisingly she agreed to go with me.

  And so, a few months later, I sat excitedly on a plane as it descended toward Rovaniemi in Finland. Looking out of the window, I saw a snow-covered winter wonderland waiting for us, just like I’d imagined. Living in Greece, I don’t often get to see much snow, apart from glancing at the mountains from a distance. The scene from the plane’s window was spectacular. There was mile upon mile of snow and the fir trees… well, I’ve never seen so many Christmas trees in my life!

  However, as we got off the plane, the bitter wind hit us. Luckily, our first stop on the three-hour ride to the hotel was to be kitted out in a full body suit, with hood and big boots. I felt ready to get out there and find Santa, but we still had a two-hour coach trip further north.

  We arrived at our hotel mid-afternoon and it was already getting dark. We had crossed the Arctic Circle. I looked around. There weren’t many buildings there apart from the hotel and log cabins and I felt as if I had come to one of the farthest and most deserted places in the world. There is something eerie about it getting dark so early in the afternoon.

  We went to see Santa that same day. Our group met in the hotel lobby and I was astonished to see that there were quite a few couples without children. Our instructions were to go and find Santa ourselves, which seemed a daunting task. However, there was help at hand.

  As we went outside, we were hit by a blast of freezing air, but this was soon forgotten when an elf suddenly appeared and pointed us in the direction of Santa’s home. We trudged through the snow, and with the help of signposts and a few more elves we finally got closer to our destination. By this time, the children in the group were very excited and I must admit they weren’t the only ones.

  Santa’s house looked as welcoming as I had imagined, and it was great to see a couple of reindeer waiting patiently outside for the man himself.

  We went in, and within minutes were warm and cozy. There was a log fire burning cheerfully in one corner and sitting close by was Father Christmas, dressed in red, with a long white beard. He was the jolliest man I had ever seen. The kids ran to him while the adults stood near the back, not wanting to spoil the fun. When the elves had calmed the kids down, Santa brought out a pile of letters. Imagine the surprise on the faces of the children when they saw that Santa had the letters they had written to him.

  We still had another three days in Lapland after we met Santa. I had always wanted to ride in a sleigh pulled by a team of Huskies and I was excited to get the chance to do it. The dogs were strong and fast, and I was amazed how they managed to pull Clare and me at such speed.

  We were also introduced to more reindeer and had a leisurely sleigh ride with them. Then we had a go on a snowmobile, which I must admit I didn’t quite get the hang of. Having ridden motorbikes, I went on full of confidence, but unfortunately came off feeling quite shamefaced by my efforts.

  We were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights one evening. It was spectacular. What a mixture of colors lighting up the clear night sky.

  My trip to Lapland turned out to be everything I had expected it to be. It was a great experience and a fantastic start to the Christmas season.

  ~Irena Nieslony

  The Big Box

  After a girl is grown, her little brothers — now her protectors — seem like big brothers.

  ~Terri Guillemets

  The smell of Norwegian cookies greeted me as I opened the front door to my parents’ home and wiped my dripping nose on the cuff of my jacket. The sounds of muted Christmas carols played on the stereo. A fire burned hot in the fireplace with the sound of popping and crackling.

  “The wood is damp,” my father said to no one in particular. “I had better see where that tarp is leaking.” Happy to have a mission, he put on an army-issue parka and his “bunny boots” and headed out the door. He paused. “Were the roads slippery?”

  “Not too bad,” I lied, as I shrugged out of my coat. My luggage and dirty laundry were in heaps on the landing.

  He paused a moment in the kitchen. “Karen’s home,” he said to my mother and continued his task without interruption.

  My mother had just finished brewing a pot of coffee. She came out of the kitchen smiling and was clad in a sweater that was the perfect shade of red for her. She always seemed to look perfect. I looked down at the jeans I was wearing for the second day in a row and my college sweatshirt with the permanent pizza stain on the cuff.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Take your laundry downstairs, I’ll sort it later. Is this all of it?” she asked as she picked up one of my suitcases. I nodded and we carried it down to the laundry room.

  I looked around a little, then peeked in one of my brothers’ bedrooms.

  “Where’s Dave?”

  “Outside, bringing in more wood for tomorrow.”

  “Gary?”

  “Around somewhere.”

  I felt a little letdown. I was a returning college freshman — the least they could have done was greet me with some excitement!

  I noticed that my little brother had moved everything he owned into my old room and posters of dirt bikes soaring through the air hung everywhere. I was to stay in the bedroom upstairs — the guest room.

  I was starting to feel like a guest in my own home.

  I went back to the living room.

  “Here, Karen, sit close to the fire,” my dad offered. I was chilled now and the fire felt good, I felt the knot in my stomach unwind just a little.

  “I checked the oil in your car and added transmission fluid and windshield washer fluid.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I also added some HEET to your gas tank.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Lots of snow on your car; the tires are pretty iced.”

  “Yeah, it’s snowing pretty hard out there.”

  My father looked at me but didn’t say much; I knew he had figured out the roads were a lot worse than I had let on. My mom carried in coffee and the fresh Norwegian krumkake cookies she had made. She and my dad locked eyes and smiled at each other.

  “You can open that big present early if you want,” my dad said, trying not to smile.

  I looked. There was a big box under the Christmas tree. It looked like a TV box or a box with a small refrigerator in it. My name was on it in large red letters. Puzzled that they would let me open a present without the whole family around, I paused, but not for long. I ripped the paper off the box, lifted the two flaps on top with shaking fingers, and peered inside.

  “Surprise!” My younger brother, Gary, popped out of the box with a bow on his head. “Merry Christmas, Karen!” he screamed amid uncontrollable peals of laughter. My dad started snickering.

  I sat on the floor, stunned.

  I had just completed my first semester of college. I had struggled with independence, money shortages, and finals. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and more than a little lost in life. I had expected some fanfare when I arrived home, not people checking tarps, talking about laundry as if I had never been gone, and moving me to the guest room. And now, instead of a big, surprising present, my brother had jumped out and scared me.

  I looked at the box and burst into tears. My family stared at me. After I had hiccupped my last sob I looked down at my lap, ashamed of my outburst. I took a krumkake off the plate. I sat and sniffed. I examined the cookie closely, avoiding the eyes of my family.

  My dad said loudly, “I used to get terrible headaches after finals.”

  I started to feel better. My father, in his own way, had r
eminded me that this was my family; I wasn’t a guest in this house. If I fell apart here, they would still want me around. It was okay — I was okay. They were glad I was home, no matter what kind of emotional wreck I was. My father dove into a discussion regarding the maintenance he planned to put my car through the next day; my mother brought me another krumkake and a cup of “de-caf” as she put it.

  My little brother came up to me with the bow still in his hair, brown eyes serious.

  “Wanna play Monopoly?” he asked. “You can be the car if you want.”

  “But that’s your favorite piece,” I said as we sat down in front of the fireplace.

  “It’s okay. You can have it. But only today and only because you cried.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled and ruffled the bow out of his hair. I lifted an eyebrow. “Thanks for the early Christmas present too.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” He took a huge bite out of my krumkake.

  Looking back I cannot imagine how my little brother felt when I started crying. My parents told me that he missed me when I left for college. He had spent hours planning and wrapping the big box. He had put a festive Christmas bow on his head and watched for my car in the driveway. He raced to the box, tucked himself inside and waited patiently for the better part of an hour while I hauled laundry downstairs, talked cars with my father and, in general, took my time.

  My little brother, in his heart, had given himself to me for Christmas.

  Now, as a mother, my heart is touched in many ways by the hand of a child. But I still remember the Christmas of the Big Box because it was the first time I realized how much children really give of themselves and how easy it is to damage their small spirits.

  I tease Gary about giving himself to me for Christmas, because after all it’s my job as his sister. He denies, with embarrassment, having done so. I realize now how sweet the gesture was, and how much he cared that I was returning home for a visit. I often wonder what his response would be to the teasing now if I had been more mature when the original gift had been offered, if I had embraced him and given him the big kiss he deserved.

  ~Karen J. Olson

  The Best Gift of All

  Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.

  ~Lisa Alther

  Larry was seven and I was five and we were obsessed with dinosaurs. When we saw the plastic dinosaur models at the toy store, we wanted them more than anything else.

  I wrote a letter to Santa, asking him to please, please bring me a Stegosaurus model kit. Larry wrote a similar letter, asking for a Tyrannosaurus Rex model. We both wrote in our letters that we had worked awful hard to be good that year, which we had, and if Santa could just see his way to bringing each of us a dinosaur model kit, we wouldn’t ask for anything else.

  When my mom read our letters, she looked at us and asked, “Are you sure you’re both old enough for a model kit? Those things can be hard to put together.”

  “We can do it!” I told her, envisioning how I would snap a few pieces together, put a dab of glue here and there, and voila, my Stegosaurus would be staring at me with all the prehistoric coolness only a gift like that could bring.

  “Not a problem!” my brother Larry said, probably imagining how ferocious and mighty his easily put together Tyrannosaurus would look once he spent five minutes or so slapping it together. The smile on his face grew even wider than before.

  “If you think you can really do it,” she said, looking unsure. “I’m sure Santa would be glad to bring you model kits for Christmas.”

  “Dinosaur model kits,” my brother said. He showed her an ad we’d cut out of the toy store’s catalog.

  “Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex,” I added, pointing to pictures of the specific kits.

  Mom looked at the pictures. “There sure are lots of little bitty pieces,” she said softly.

  “It’ll be easy!” I said confidently.

  Well, Christmas Eve came, and my brother, sister and I went off to sleep, although I didn’t do much sleeping. Somewhere around 5:00 a.m., Larry and I slipped out of bed and crept downstairs to find that Santa had come and gone, and under the tree were two big presents for my brother and me!

  I tore the wrapping paper off mine and jumped for joy. My model Stegosaurus! Santa had brought me the toy I had wanted more than anything. My brother got his Tyrannosaurus Rex, too. We danced around the living room, then ran to the kitchen table and opened up our model kits… and stared at what looked like a million pieces of plastic. There was a big, fat manual that had instructions on how to put the model together. It might as well have been a manual on how to fly to the moon. My brother and I sighed at the same time.

  Still, we were excited and we set about twisting and bending the pieces out of their plastic holders. When we were through, it seemed like there was even more pieces than before.

  “You two are going to put those things together?” my sister asked, looking at the immense pile of plastic on the table. “You can’t even match up your own socks.”

  “We can do it!” I said, grinning at my brother. I grabbed the tube of glue that Santa had been nice enough to include and had Larry read me the instructions from the manual.

  Half a day later, all we had was a bunch of sticky pieces, some that were glued to the table, some to the instruction manual, and some to my brother and me. There was no sign of two ferocious, mighty dinosaurs.

  And so, my brother and I did what any dynamic duo would do when stymied by an impossible project: we began to cry. Larry and I cried our eyes out over the mess we had made and the pile of plastic sitting before us. Our mom dried our tears and handed us other presents to distract us, but we kept looking back at the pile of dinosaur parts and our eyes would well up again.

  That Christmas night I felt as if a wonderful dream had turned into a nightmare. I don’t know how long I lay there in my bed, dozing on and off, but somewhere in the middle of the night I heard a series of clicking sounds. I got up from bed and wandered into the living room, and this is what I saw: my mom was at the kitchen table, sorting through all the dozens of pieces, wiping off the old glue with a washcloth, and slowly gluing them together.

  I stood and watched her patiently work, our secret elf who would make Christmas magic again. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and a part of me wondered if it was a dream. I wandered back to bed not knowing.

  In the morning Larry and I sadly stumbled into the living room. We were prepared to toss the plastic mess in the trash and call it a failed experiment. We walked up to the kitchen table, looked for those heaps of sticky plastic parts, and we gasped. There, standing before us, was the most magnificent pair of model dinosaurs we had ever seen. My Stegosaurus and Larry’s Tyrannosaurus Rex stood whole and proud and awesomely ferocious.

  “Santa must have come back last night and fixed them for us!” Larry shouted, picking up his dinosaur and hugging it.

  “That must have been what happened,” Mom said, coming into the living room looking a little tired, but very happy.

  I looked at my mom, and noticed that there was a small piece of plastic stuck to her pajamas. I ran up to her and hugged her tight, knowing that she had given us a truly wonderful gift: the gift of her time, her patience, and her boundless love. It was the best Christmas gift of all.

  ~John P. Buentello

  Having Mercy

  Dogs act exactly the way we would act if we had no shame.

  ~Cynthia Heimel

  My father and stepmother, Polly, had owned many Boxers, each with a distinct personality. Their latest Boxer, Mercy, joined the family a couple of months before Christmas.

  Dad and Polly watched her carefully when they set up the tree and started putting wrapped gifts under it. Some of their previous dogs had been drawn to the tree and the gifts, but not Mercy. She seemed oblivious, even when they placed edible gifts under the tree, including a big, wrapped box of dog biscuits.

  A few nights before Christma
s Polly woke up while it was still dark and silent, as she often did. As she passed the living room door she glanced in, and what she saw made her stop cold. They’d been robbed. The area under the Christmas tree had been stacked high with colorful gifts. Now every last present was gone. Suddenly Polly was struck by a much worse thought.

  Why hadn’t Mercy barked? Where was she? Had the thieves taken her, too?

  She checked Mercy’s bed and found it empty. Mercy was nowhere to be found. In a panic, Polly was about to wake Dad, when she noticed a piece of red ribbon on the living room floor. A few feet away, there was a scrap of wrapping paper and a little further on, some glitter. It all seemed to form a trail, leading to the back door.

  For a moment, Polly stood at that door, hesitating.

  Should she open it? What if the thief was still there?

  Finally she flipped the light switch and cautiously opened the door to the back yard. And there was the perp.

  Mercy lay under her favorite tree, surrounded by packages that were chewed, gnawed, pawed and emptied. Mercy had silently carried one package after another, through the house and the doggy door, to where she could pillage in private.

  Anything that was edible was gone, including chocolates, cookies, fancy breads, candy canes, and four pounds of Milk-Bones. Beautifully wrapped boxes now had gaping holes and were damp with dog saliva. And Mercy was in the middle of the mess, looking guilty, sorry… and a little sick.

  Fortunately, nature took its course and Mercy didn’t need to have her stomach pumped. In the morning, Dad and Polly cleaned up the mess and salvaged what little they could.

  “Who needs presents?” laughed Dad, happy that Mercy survived her midnight snack.

  For Polly, the loss of the presents wasn’t the worst problem. It was identifying who’d sent what.

  “How do I send out thank-you notes?” she fretted. “Mercy destroyed all the tags.”

  In the end, Mercy herself provided the answer. The day after Christmas, Polly returned to her easy chair to find Mercy looking guilty as she licked the now-empty plate where a donut had been. Polly quickly snapped a picture of the shame-faced pooch, and sent a copy with each “thank you for the ??” note, along with the story. Polly was a little embarrassed, but we all got a good laugh and Mercy… well she obtained mercy.